¹ Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, ‘Justice has something to do with it: class relations and the Confederate army’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 113 (Sept. 2005), pp. 341–5Google Scholar.

² John S. Preston to Robert E. Lee, endorsed by James Seddon, 29 Aug. 1863 in Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (OR), series iv, vol. ii, p. 768.

³ Glatthaar, Joseph T., General Lee's army from victory to collapse (New York, NY, 2008), p. 409Google Scholar.

⁴ Many of the works cited in this footnote stress the complex nature of desertion and rarely stress one singular reason for men leaving the army. However, in terms of their main emphasis, many scholars of desertion have stressed the primacy of non-ideological factors. The two classic books on desertion from the early twentieth century by Ella Lonn and Bessie Martin both emphasized the material suffering of the southern civilian population and the families of deserters. Martin does so in a more focused manner and her argument fits neatly with the emergent argument of the time, that the inability of the Confederate government to provide for poor people created sizable fissures along class lines that ultimately led to the defeat of the Confederacy. See Lonn, Ella, Desertion during the Civil War (Gloucester, MA, 1928)Google Scholar, and Martin, Bessie, Desertion of Alabama troops from the Confederate army: a study in sectionalism (New York, NY, 1932)Google Scholar. In terms of more recent scholarship, though more refined, the work of Richard Reid and Mark A. Weitz, on North Carolinian and Georgian deserters, respectively, both underline the centrality of poverty and family to the act of desertion. See Reid, Richard, ‘A test case of the “Crying Evil”: desertion among North Carolina troops during the Civil War’, North Carolina Historical Review, 58 (1981), pp. 234–62Google Scholar, and Weitz, Mark A., A higher duty: desertion among Georgia troops during the Civil War (Lincoln, NE, 2000)Google Scholar. In a specifically South Carolinian context, the recent research of Aaron W. Marrs posits that ‘men left at specific times for specific reasons that may have had little to do with ideology’. See Marrs, Aaron W., ‘Desertion and loyalty in the South Carolina infantry, 1861–1865’, Civil War History, 50 (2004), pp. 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 61. In terms of broader studies, Joseph T. Glatthaar's recent study of the Army of Northern Virginia likewise emphasizes socio-economic circumstances in motivating deserters. See Glatthaar, General Lee's army, pp. 409–15. Several studies have presented a more complex picture, highlighting the slippage between ideology and socio-economic factors. Yet these works tend to see political dissent and alienation from the Confederacy, again, as a product of worsening economic conditions at home. See Dotson, Rand, ‘“The grave and scandalous evil infected to your people”: the erosion of Confederate loyalty in Floyd County, Virginia’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 108 (2000), pp. 393–434Google Scholar, King-Owen, Scott, ‘Conditional Confederates: absenteeism among western North Carolina soldiers, 1861–1865’, Civil War History, 57 (2011), pp. 349–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Weitz, Mark A., More damning than slaughter: desertion in the Confederate army (Lincoln, NE, 2005)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 6. In an interesting juncture in these debates, Brian Holden Reid and John White have stressed that men deserted primarily because of basic issues of military discipline, as opposed to social, economic, or ideological reasoning, concluding that a ‘lack of discipline … was the root cause of desertion’ in Civil War armies. See Reid, Brian Holden and White, John, ‘“A mob of stragglers and cowards”: desertion from the Union and Confederate armies, 1861–1865’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 8 (1985), pp. 64–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from p. 68.

⁵ James T. Otten's article regarding desertion and disloyalty in the South Carolina upper piedmont districts of Anderson, Greenville, Pickens, and Spartanburg strongly articulates that anti-Confederate government behaviour was driven by residual Unionism. See Otten, James T., ‘Disloyalty in the upper districts of South Carolina during the Civil War’, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 75 (1974), pp. 95–110Google Scholar. Unfortunately, though, some of Otten's evidence is derived from the post-war memoirs of escaped Union soldiers imprisoned in South Carolina during the war, despite the obvious methodological complications of relying on documents written decades after the event by authors with such obvious bias. For a more articulate desertion study that stresses potential political or ideological motivations, see Giuffre, Katherine, ‘First in flight: desertion as politics in the North Carolina Confederate army’, Social Science History, 21 (1997), pp. 246–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Peter S. Bearman's study of North Carolinian deserters also hints at ideological shifts, primarily the erosion of Confederate nationalism at the company level, as motivating men to leave their post, and generally disregards individual interests as motivating factors for absent soldiers. Bearman's point, though, is more about the competing forces of Confederate nationalism and persistent localism, as he sees them. See Bearman, Peter S., ‘Desertion as localism: army unit solidarity and group norms in the U.S. Civil War’, Social Forces, 70 (1991), pp. 321–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ The two books on American Civil War soldiers that have laid greatest emphasis on the ideological convictions of its combatants are McPherson, James M., For cause and comrades: why men fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar, and Manning, Chandra, What this cruel war was over: soldiers, slavery and the Civil War (New York, NY, 2007)Google Scholar. For other works that also stress the importance of ideology in motivating Civil War soldiers, see Hess, Earl J., Liberty, virtue and progress: northerners and their war for the Union (New York, NY, 1988)Google Scholar, and Mitchell, Reid, Civil War soldiers (New York, NY, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁷ See McPherson, For cause and comrades; Manning, What this cruel war was over; and Gary W. Gallagher, The Union war (Cambridge, MA, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁸ See Gallagher, Gary W., The Confederate war: how popular will, nationalism and military strategy could not stave off defeat (Cambridge, MA, 1997)Google Scholar; Blair, William, Virginia's private war: feeding body and soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; and Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, Why Confederates fought: family and nation in Civil War Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Marrs, ‘Desertion and loyalty’, pp. 61–5. There is, of course, a level of imprecision about the term AWOL. Some men who were missing in action or lost in an extensive hospital bureaucracy were surely listed as AWOL, distorting the figures. Moreover, there is a certain level of bleed, so to speak, between being AWOL and being a deserter. Though a soldier may leave with the intention of returning, this does not mean that he will, and Confederate soldiers who had been absent for a lengthy period would sometimes have their status changed on muster rolls from being AWOL to being deserters.

¹⁰ Gallagher, The Confederate war, pp. 31–6.

¹¹ Reid and White, ‘“A mob of stragglers and cowards”’, p. 64. Emphasis in original text.

¹² Register of Confederate soldiers deserting to the Union army, 1863–1865 (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC), RG 598, Reel 8 (RoCD). More information was gleaned regarding the South Carolina deserters in the Register by locating them in the Compiled service records of Confederate soldiers who served in organizations from the state of South Carolina (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC) and, where possible, the 1860 Federal census. In total, 199 South Carolinian soldiers were located in the Register as either residing in South Carolina or fighting in a South Carolinian regiment, or both. In terms of locating these men in the 1860 Federal census, 40·7 per cent, or 81 deserters, were found. For more methodological information on the RoCD, see Weitz, A higher duty, pp. 181–3.

¹³ Sutherland, Daniel E., A savage conflict: the decisive role of guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009), p. 254Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Two recent works that have moved away from the ‘why they fought’ question, associated with the literature cited in n. 6, towards a growing appreciation of feelings, emotions, and sensibilities are Berry, Stephen W., All that makes a man: love and ambition in the Civil War south (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar, and Phillips, Jason, Diehard rebels: the Confederate culture of invincibility (Athens, GA, 2007)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Bearman, ‘Desertion as localism’, p. 340.

¹⁶ Marrs, ‘Desertion and loyalty’, pp. 55–9.

¹⁷ Kenneth W. Noe's recent in-depth research on late-enlisting Confederate soldiers similarly notes that there is not a clear relationship between when a soldier enlists and a propensity for absenteeism. See Noe, Kenneth W., Reluctant rebels: the Confederates who joined the army after 1861 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), pp. 171–91Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Martin, Desertion of Alabama troops, p. 258.

¹⁹ Page, Thomas Nelson, Two little Confederates (New York, NY, 1888), pp. 35–6Google Scholar. Accessed via Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26725.

²⁰ Much of the foundational work on the lower to middle reaches of southern society, or ‘plain folk’ as he termed them, was completed by Owsley, Frank L.. See Owsley, Frank L., Plain folk of the old south (Baton Rouge, LA, 1949)Google Scholar. The 1980s saw a burgeoning of work on the yeomen of the south. Hahn's, StevenThe roots of southern populism: yeoman farmers and the transformation of the Georgia upcountry, 1850–1890 (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar reinvigorated the topic and was at the forefront of a generation of groundbreaking work on the southern yeomanry. A significant number of the most useful works on the yeomanry and social structure have dealt specifically with South Carolina. See Harris, J. William, Plain folk and gentry in a slave society: white liberty and black slavery in Augusta's hinterlands (Baton Rouge, LA, 1985)Google Scholar; Burton, Orville Vernon, In my father's house are many mansions: family and community in Edgefield, South Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985)Google Scholar; Ford, Lacy K., Origins of southern radicalism: the South Carolina upcountry, 1800–1860 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; McCurry, Stephanie, Masters of small worlds: yeoman households, gender relations, and the political culture of the antebellum South Carolina low country (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar and West, Stephen A., From yeoman to redneck in the South Carolina upcountry, 1850–1915 (Charlottesville, VA, 2008)Google Scholar.

²¹ It should be noted that McCurry's definition focuses on ‘self-working farmers’ with 150 improved acres or fewer seen as a threshold under which the household head and his family would presumably have to labour in the fields. McCurry, Masters of small worlds, pp. 47–51.

²² If a soldier was too young in 1860 to have any property holding or was not considered a household head then the wider family was considered in order to have the most accurate results. There was one soldier, Henry A. Smith, who was located in the 1860 federal census, who was too young and for whom it was impossible to locate his family as he was a cadet at the Arsenal Academy in Columbia. However, in this instance, it was assumed that he was most likely from a landowning family due to his privileged education, though some schools and colleges in the antebellum south did endeavour to recruit bright, but poor, children.

²³ Two notable studies of poor whites in the 1990s both equate not owning land with poor white status. See Bynum, Victoria E., Unruly women: the politics of social and sexual control in the old south (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992), p. 6Google Scholar, and Bolton, Charles C., Poor whites of the antebellum south: tenants and laborers in central North Carolina and northeast Mississippi (Durham, NC, 1994), p. 11Google Scholar.

²⁴ This reasoning regarding agricultural tenancy is used by Lacy K. Ford. See Ford, Origins of southern radicalism, p. 85 n. 99.

²⁵ For more on the difficulty in placing southern artisans within a broader social schema, particularly because of their ability to achieve upward social mobility, see Gillespie, Michele, Free labor in an unfree world: white artisans in slaveholding Georgia, 1789–1860 (Athens, GA, 2000), pp. 170–1Google Scholar. A forthcoming article by David Brown seeks to bring further nuance to the way we think of poor whites, as a social class, by stressing that there were in fact two distinct groups within the poor white class: aspirational poor whites, such as artisans and agricultural tenants, who sought to join the yeoman class, and vagabonds, a particularly marginal and mobile group of labourers who frequently drew the ire of southern planters and northern travellers alike. See Brown, David, ‘A vagabond's tale: poor whites, herrenvolk democracy, and the value of whiteness in the late antebellum south’, Journal of Southern History, 79 (2013)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

²⁶ Ford, Origins of southern radicalism, p. 71.

²⁷ Olsen, Otto H., ‘Historians and the extent of slave ownership in the southern United States’, Civil War History, 50 (2004), p. 412CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Originally printed in Civil War History, 18 (1972).

²⁸ Smith, Mark M., Debating slavery: economy and society in the antebellum American south (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 15–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Harris, Plain folk and gentry in a slave society, p. 81.

³⁰ Figures on occupation in the 1860 federal census taken from Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, DC, 1864), pp. 454–5.

³¹ For more on the methodological complications arising from the inconsistent approach of census enumerators, particularly regarding the identification of tenant farmers, see Bode, Frederick A. and Ginter, Donald E., Farm tenancy and the census in antebellum Georgia (Athens, GA, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 2, particularly pp. 33–44.

³² Bearman, ‘Desertion as localism’, p. 330.

³³ RoCD, book i, p. 178.

³⁴ Weitz, A higher duty, pp. 171–9. A similar argument is made by Reid Mitchell, who also contends that Confederate deserters simply chose home over the Confederacy during the closing years of the war. Mitchell, Reid, The vacant chair: the northern soldier leaves home (Oxford, 1993), pp. 160–1Google Scholar.

³⁵ Sarah E. Martin to William Martin, 21 Oct. 1864, William Waddell and Sarah Elizabeth Martin papers, Clemson University Special Collections, Clemson, SC.

³⁶ Austin Lister to Mary Lister, 4 Nov. 1863, Lister Family papers, South Carolina Library (SCL), University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.

³⁷ Allen Edens to his wife, 23 Mar. 1865, in Swank, Walbrook D., ed., Confederate letters and diaries, 1861–1865 (Shippensburg, PE, 1998), p. 143Google Scholar.

³⁸ Marten, James, ‘Fatherhood in the Confederacy: southern soldiers and their children’, Journal of Southern History, 63 (1997), p. 279Google Scholar.

³⁹ A recent quantitative study of soldiers and deserters in the Union army has made similar conclusions, explaining that ‘married men were almost one-and-a-half times as likely to desert as single men’. Costa, Dora L. and Kahn, Matthew E., Heroes and cowards: the social face of war (Princeton, NJ, 2008), p. 110Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ I use the term seemingly because it is possible that other children could have married or left the family household to set up on their own, meaning they would not appear as part of their parents’ household in the 1860 Federal census. Even if this is the case, however, the fact that it was elder, if not necessarily the eldest, children that were deserting supports the fundamental point that older children would have had greater responsibilities in helping their family's agricultural endeavours.

⁴¹ The James F. Sloan papers are held at the SCL. For a good discussion of the internal power and economic relationships within the Sloan household, see Stephanie McCurry, ‘The politics of yeoman households in South Carolina’, in Clinton, Catherine and Silber, Nina, eds.,Divided houses: gender and the Civil War (Oxford, 1992), pp. 31–6Google Scholar.

⁴² RoCD, book ii, p. 243.

⁴³ RoCD, book i, p. 80. The act of serving in an out-of-state regiment was not rare, especially in border districts like York. This practice is probably best explained by the fact that some out-of-state regiments would have offered better bounties for service and the desire of men to fight with relatives who may have resided outside of South Carolina, again reaffirming the importance of family to these men.

⁴⁴ RoCD, book i, p. 216.

⁴⁵ A prominent example of such literature, written by a World War One veteran-come-combat historian, is Marshall, S. L. A., Men against fire: battle command in future war (New York, NY, 1947)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Linderman, Gerald F., Embattled courage: the experience of combat in the American Civil War (New York, NY, 1989)Google Scholar, particularly ch. 5.

⁴⁷ Lisa Laskin, ‘“The army is not near so much demoralized as the country is”: soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate home front’, in Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, ed., The view from the ground: experiences of Civil War soldiers (Lexington, KY, 2007), p. 111Google Scholar. Emphasis in original text.

⁴⁸ For an interesting and useful article that stresses the important role community had in Civil War desertion, though the author's focus is on northern communities, see Hallock, Judith Lee, ‘The role of the community in Civil War desertion’, Civil War History, 29 (1983), pp. 123–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Andrew Haughton, ‘The experience of the Civil War: men at arms’, in Grant, Susan-Mary and Reid, Brian Holden, eds., Themes of the American Civil War: the war between the states (2nd edn, London, 2010), pp. 91–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ William Henry Harrison Lee to wife, undated 1862, William Henry Harrison Lee papers, SCL. Aaron Marrs's research shows that Lee deserted from the 16th South Carolina Infantry on 25 Aug. 1862. Marrs, ‘Desertion and loyalty’, p. 62.

⁵¹ Samuel Roper to James Earle Hagood, 1 Dec. 1864, James Earle Hagood papers, SCL.

⁵² James Pelot to Lalla Pelot, 1 Feb. 1865, Lalla Pelot papers, Duke University Special Collections, Durham, NC. Emphasis in original text. Interestingly, Joseph Pelot does not appear in the Register, at least not as residing in South Carolina, which he did in 1860 according to the Federal census. The reason that James is convinced that ‘Joe’ took the oath is that last time they spoke he was ‘very despondent’, just prior to the fall of Savannah.

⁵³ E. H. Willis to Sister, 29 Jan. 1865, Willis Family papers, SCL.

⁵⁴ Daniel Boyd to Robert Boyd, 29 Mar. 1865 in Jones, J. Keith, ed., The boys of Diamond Hill: the lives and Civil War letters of the Boyd family of Abbeville County, South Carolina (Jefferson, NC, 2011), p. 137Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Charleston district, however, is the most represented district, providing 47 out of 199 deserters, or 23·6 per cent of the total. There are several reasons for this occurrence. First, it was a highly populous district. Secondly, and more to the point, Charleston was anomalous in terms of the war experience of South Carolina, being subjected to continual shelling and several amphibious assaults during 1864. Thirdly, opportunity was ample. The consistent Union attacks on the city meant that those soldiers who were stationed in their home district could quickly cross Union lines and expect to be home swiftly. Not only this, but those who were perhaps captured by Federal forces would be more prepared to take the loyalty oath knowing their geographic proximity to their loved ones.

⁵⁷ The behaviour of armed bands was discussed by the relevant state and governmental authorities. See the various correspondences between state and Confederate officials in OR, series iv, vol. ii, pp. 769–71. For more on the upcountry's armed bands see Otten, ‘Disloyalty in the upper districts’, pp. 99–101. Lonn identifies the districts of Anderson, Greenville, and Pickens as ‘deserter country’ in the map that precedes her monograph. See Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War.

⁵⁸ Jas. Welsh to M. L. Bonham, 14 Nov. 1864, Governor Bonham's official correspondence, 1862–4, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.

⁵⁹ A. G. Magrath to W. J. Hardee, 1 Feb. 1865, A. G. Magrath telegraph book and A. G. Magrath to E. B. C. Cash, 12 Feb. 1865, A. G. Magrath letter book. Both the telegraph book and letter book are contained in the A. G. Magrath papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC.

⁶⁰ C. D. Melton to John S. Preston, 26 Aug. 1863, in OR, series iv, vol. ii, pp. 769–70.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Robert E. Lee to Zebulon Vance, 24 Feb. 1865, in OR, series i, vol. xlvii, p. 1270.

⁶³ Samuel Wickliffe Melton to Mary Helen Gore Melton, 22 Feb. 1864, Samuel Wickliffe Melton papers, SCL.

⁶⁴ Melton to Preston, 26 Aug. 1863, in OR, series iv, vol. ii, pp. 769–70.

⁶⁵ Stephen A. West's research listed 436 male slaveholders residing in Pickens district in 1860. The percentage was then calculated by comparing this figure to those listed as white, male, and over the age of twenty in the 1860 census, which amounted to 3,044. West, From yeoman to redneck, p. 29, and Population of the United States in 1860, pp. 448–9. The black demographic of Pickens was also calculated by using the figures in Population of the United States in 1860, p. 452.

⁶⁶ Figure taken from Racine, Philip N., ed., Piedmont farmer: the journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855–1870 (Knoxville, TN, 1990), p. 2Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Perry was opposed to secession throughout the antebellum period and was a highly influential figure in upcountry politics. For more on Perry, see Kibler, Lillian Adele, Benjamin F. Perry, South Carolina Unionist (Durham, NC, 1946)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ David Golightly Harris journal entries 5 Jan. 1861 and 9 Jan. 1861, in Racine, ed., Piedmont farmer, pp. 173–4. Harris went on to note that, despite their disbandment, ‘I do not believe their politics are changed.’ Quote from p. 174.

⁶⁹ Edgefield Advertiser, 10 Apr. 1861.

⁷⁰ Special Orders No. 170, 12 Oct. 1861, OR, series ii, vol. iii, p. 52.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² Bertram Wyatt-Brown suggests that oath-taking was a serious matter for southern men yet that they could also be hypocritical about it when it suited their needs. Indeed, Wyatt-Brown suggests that southern men could take an oath that they disagreed with or opposed, such as that imposed by the victorious Union army at the close of the conflict, reassuring themselves that the attached shame was unworthy of a proud people. Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Southern honor: ethics and behavior in the old south (Oxford, 1982), pp. 55–8Google Scholar. Anne Sarah Rubin likewise suggests that loyalty oaths caused conflicted feelings for white southerners but that many took them, despite opposing them in principle, out of a sense of pragmatism. Rubin, Anne Sarah, A shattered nation: the rise and fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), pp. 272–4Google Scholar. Moreover, Harold M. Hyman, the most dedicated scholar of Civil War era loyalty oaths, generally portrayed them as unsuccessful in establishing loyalty to the Union and Federal Government. Hyman, Harold M., Era of the oath: northern loyalty tests during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Philadelphia, PA, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Meanwhile, in California, where loyalty oaths to the United States were required for all practising lawyers and plaintiffs in courts as of 1863, large numbers of southern-sympathizing Democrat lawyer-politicians spurned the oaths, retired, or left the state, suggesting, conversely, that taking an oath one did not believe was impalpable for these men. Chandler, Robert J., ‘California's 1863 loyalty oaths: another look’, Arizona and the West, 21 (1979), pp. 215–16Google Scholar.

⁷³ In 1860, the South Carolinian free population was 301,392, with 9,986 being foreign born, and 4,906 being born in Ireland. Population of the United States in 1860, p. 453.

⁷⁴ Gleeson, David T., ‘“To live and die [for] Dixie”: Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America’, Irish Studies Review, 18 (2010), pp. 143–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁵ Roper to Hagood, 1 Dec. 1864, James Earle Hagood papers, SCL.

⁷⁶ See the literature cited in n. 20.

⁷⁷ Glatthaar, General Lee's army, p. 414.